Brewery Business Plan Template

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their breweries. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a brewery business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your brewery or microbrewery as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan

If you’re looking to start a brewery or grow your existing brewery you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your brewery in order to improve your chances of success. Your brewery business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Source of Funding for Breweries

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a brewery are bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable. But they will want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business.

The second most common form of funding for a brewery is angel investors. Angel investors are wealthy individuals who will write you a check. They will either take equity in return for their funding, or, like a bank, they will give you a loan. Venture capitalists will generally not fund a brewery. Private equity investors would consider a brewery or microbrewery business plan for funding, if it has already reached considerable scale.

Brewery Business Plan Template

Your business plan should include 10 sections as follows:

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of brewery business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a brewery that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of brewpubs.

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the brewery industry. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Analysis

In your company analysis, you will detail the type of brewery you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following 5 core types of breweries:

Microbrewery: which is a brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year and sells 75% or more of its beer off-premises.

Brewpub: which is a restaurant-brewery combination that sells 25% or more of its beer on-site and offers food service

Taproom Brewery: which sells 25% or more of its beer on-site, but does not offer food services

Regional Brewery: a brewery that has annual beer production of between 15,000 and 6,000,000 barrels

Contract Brewing Company: a business that contracts with another brewery to produce its beer

In addition to explaining the type of brewery you operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to question such as:

When and why did you start the business?

What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include sales goals you’ve reached, new store openings, etc.

Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the brewery business.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the brewery industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy particularly if your research identifies market trends. For example, if there was a trend towards lighter beer consumption, it would be helpful to ensure your plan calls for plenty of lighter brew options.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your brewery business plan:

How big is the brewery business (in dollars)?

Is the market declining or increasing?

Who are the key competitors in the market?

Who are the key suppliers in the market?

What trends are affecting the industry?

What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?

What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your brewery. You can extrapolate such as figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local or regional population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your brewery business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of brewery you operate. Clearly baby boomers would want a different atmosphere, pricing and product options, and would respond to different marketing promotions than college students.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve. Because most breweries primarily serve customers living in their same city or town, such demographic information is easy to find on government websites.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other breweries.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from you that aren’t direct competitors. This primarily includes restaurants (for brewpubs) and other products (spirits, wine) for microbreweries. You need to mention such competition to show you understand that not everyone who drinks alcohol frequents a brewery.

With regards to direct competition, you want to detail the other breweries with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be breweries and brewpubs located in your region.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

What types of customers do they serve?

What products do they offer?

What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?

What are they good at?

What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

Will you provide superior brewery products or services?

Will you provide brewery products that your competitors don’t offer?

Will you provide better customer service?

Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a brewery business plan, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product: in the product section you should reiterate the type of brewery that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, will you brew IPAs, pilsners, stouts, etc.?

Price: Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the menu items you offer and their prices.

Place: Place refers to the location of your brewery. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your brewery located next to a heavily populated office building, or gym, etc. Discuss how your location might provide a steady stream of customers. Also, if you operate or plan to operate kiosks, detail the locations where the kiosks will be placed.

Promotions: the final part of your brewery marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your brewery such as brewing beer, serving customers, procuring supplies, keeping the store clean, etc.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to serve your X,000th customer, or when you hope to reach $X in sales. It could also be when you expect to hire your Xth employee or launch a new location.

Management Team

To demonstrate your brewery’s ability to succeed as a business, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in the brewery business. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in breweries and/or successfully running retail and small businesses.

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Income Statement: an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you serve 100 customers per day or 200? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets: While balance sheets include much information, to simplify them to the key items you need to know about, balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. For instance, if you spend $100,000 on building out your brewery, that will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $100.000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement: Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt. For example, let’s say a company approached you with a $100,000 brewing contract, that would cost you $50,000 to fulfill. Well, in most cases, you would have to pay that $50,000 now for supplies, equipment rentals, employee salaries, etc. But let’s say the company didn’t pay you for 180 days. During that 180 day period, you could run out of money.

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a brewery:

Location build-out including design fees, construction, etc.

Cost of brewing equipment

Cost of ingredients and maintaining an adequate amount of supplies

Payroll or salaries paid to staff

Business insurance

Taxes and permits

Legal expenses

Appendix

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your store design blueprint or location lease.

Summary of How to Write a Brewery Business Plan

Putting together a business plan for your brewery is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the brewery and microbrewery business, your competition and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful brewery.

How to Finish Your Microbrewery Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan?